Ice hockey chiefs have admitted they got ticket prices wrong after poor sales dogged the recent IIHF World Junior Championship in Canada.
The national team tournament took place at Montreal’s 21,273-seat Bell Centre, but huge areas were left vacant for the majority of games. While 20,173 watched the final between Canada and the US, just 8,366 showed up to see the bronze-medal game featuring Russia and Sweden.
Only 10,215 showed up to watch Canada beat the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals, while 13,456 saw Canada beat Sweden in the semis. Tournament organisers slashed ticket prices from $57 (£47/€54) to $27 ahead of the last-four game to generate sales.
The cheapest ticket for the third-place game on the Hockey Canada website was $40, however they were selling there for as little as $6 on reselling site StubHub. Tickets for the final were priced from $74 to $196, and cost around $70 on StubHub.
Poor crowds are alien for ice hockey mad Montreal, whose Canadiens NHL team has sold out 517 consecutive games dating back to January 2004.
“The atmosphere is very good,” said International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) president Rene Fasel. “But effectively, the prices were too high. If the crowd isn’t there, it’s simply, the prices are too high.
“Here, everybody knows, there’s one team: the Canadiens. And after that, the Canadiens, the Canadiens, the Canadiens. I think (Montreal mayor) Denis Coderre wants to bring a baseball team. But if the baseball team left, there must have been a good reason. I think that in Montreal, it’s the Montreal Canadiens. Voila.”
Speaking to the Toronto Star newspaper, Hockey Canada chief operating officer Scott Smith said pricing was based on local NHL games. Smith added that a premium included money needed to fund development of the sport.
“This event does generate legacy dollars,” Smith said. “Legacy is the term that we use instead of profit. But that doesn’t go to an individual or an owner. Every dollar that’s generated from this event goes back into development across Canada, to the IIHF, and to the participating teams. So there is a responsibility to find the right balance.
“And yes, we need to evaluate and make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes again. But clearly it’s our responsibility to drive some of those legacy dollars, because some of those legacy dollars have been used for recruitment programmes, to attract participants to the game, they have been used for coaching development, for player development, and for supporting our national teams.
“So the critical piece for us is we need to be well aware of the sentiment out there, but hopefully people would look at it and say, hey, they’re trying to balance both sides of that.”
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